Known as the CENTRE Consortium, the venture will be a big boost for the USDC stablecoin which was launched by Circle less than a month ago and will greatly shape the future of the stablecoin industry.

The CENTRE Consortium

Making the announcement through a blog post, Circle’s co-founders Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville described stablecoins as ‘critical infrastructure needed to build an open financial system.’

“Coinbase and Circle share a common vision of an open global financial system built on crypto rails and blockchain infrastructure, and realizing this vision requires industry leaders to collaborate to build interoperable protocols and standards.”

The consortium will first focus on Circle’s stablecoin, the USD Coin, which according to the company, is backed by dollars in reserves in a 1:1 ratio.

USDC launched just weeks ago, but it has already gained traction and is steadily carving out a growing following.

It has already been integrated by major crypto exchanges, crypto wallets and payment services provider.

These include the crypto exchange giants Huobi and OKEx as well as the largest Bitcoin payment processor, BitPay.

USDC will be available to Coinbase clients beginning today on the retail and institutional platforms, the blog post revealed. Part of the statement read:

“Customers can tokenize dollars into USDC and redeem USDC into dollars through both Circle and Coinbase, making USD Coin the industry’s first open, fungible and interoperable fiat stablecoin.”

CENTRE will be a membership-based consortium and will welcome participation from other interested firms, the statement revealed.

As the membership grows, the consortium will publish formal membership guidelines as well as a technical roadmap to guide its operations.

The significance of the joint venture is great, with Coinbase and Circle being among the most funded companies in the cryptosphere.

According to a report by blockchain analytics firm Diar, Circle raised over $110 million in the past year. Coinbase, on the other hand, has been reported to be valued at $8 billion and with its 25 million users, it will give USDC a much bigger audience.